How to Prepare For the Police ECI Interview
In this article, we will focus on one interview type that the Ontario police use during their hiring process.
Firstly, we must note that the process of application, starting with your resume and cover letter, and all the way to the job offer, is absolutely score-based. Also, make sure you are careful while interacting with the service throughout the process, as they will be evaluating everything. That means that they will keep track of every interaction in your personal recruitment file. In fact, they will monitor everything from your attendance at an informational session to any of the phone calls you make to the recruiters. Therefore, you might want to use this piece of information wisely.
When it comes to the interview system for police hiring in Ontario, there are two types of interviews. Today, we will focus on the ECI type. ECI stands for the Essential Competencies Interview. This interview contains three stages in total.
The Stages of the Essential Competencies Interview
- PBQ, or the Pre-Background Questionnaire, is the first stage of ECI. Essentially, once they assess your resume and cover letter as acceptable, they will invite you to complete a questionnaire. This questionnaire usually contains questions that mostly require short answers. However, there will be one or more essay questions, depending on the position you applied for.
- LFI, or the Local Focus Interview, is the next stage of the Essential Competencies Interview. Provided you passed the PBQ stage, the police will invite you for the LFI part. This is a part where they will ask you a series of questions, in order to test your knowledge of the community and the service you might become a part of. In addition to that, the interviewer will ask you a set of additional questions, with the aim of evaluating your answers and assessing whether you are a suitable candidate for the next stage or not.
- The final part is the toughest Essential Competencies Interview part, as it contains several behavioural questions that have pre-defined ideal answers.